Where librarians and the internet meet: internet searching, Social Media tools, search engines and their development. These are my personal views.

February 27, 2009

I'm sure that I've mentioned DeepDyve - Search for Research before, and I'm happy to have the opportunity to do so again. According to their website it is "the research engine for information-savvy consumers who want access to expert content on topics they care about. For the first time, researchers, students, technical professionals, business users, and other information consumers can access a wealth of untapped information that resides on the "Deep Web". The search box itself is quite interesting since it says 'Enter a sentence, or cut and paste a paragraph'.

They've made some changes recently, and specifically:# We've simplified the user interface to make it easier, faster and more intuitive# You can quickly refine or add filters to your query with an easy to use drop-down menu directly from the search bar# By clicking on the "Details" button from any search result, you can now read an Abstract of every document as well as see the best matching portion of text from the document# You can now Share your results to email, Digg, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter and other channels# And, we've removed the registration and login requirement and are now in "open" Beta

If you're into doing academic research, and/or want to find content that might otherwise be lost or not even indexed by Google, give DeepDyve a go!

If you've not read this blog post from Bob McKee, CILIP's Chief Executive entitled All of a twitter then you might want to take a quick look - I'll sit here and wait for you; it's quite short so won't take long.

Welcome back. I like Bob - he's a nice chap and very personable, but I
can't articulate enough how wrong he is on this issue, though I'll try.
He says 'There's some twittering at present about whether CILIP has (or
should have) any "official" presence on various lists or micro blog
sites. Sorry Bob, but we were discussing this on Twitter two weeks ago.
The boat has long since left on this one and we've moved onto other
things related to CILIP now. This in itself is worrying - if you'd
actually looked at Twitter you would have known this, so clearly you're
being briefed and are blogging about it without any real understanding.
That's fair enough in a way, because no-one can be on top of
everything, though if it's important enough for you to blog, surely
it's important enough to research a little yourself.

The more important issue isn't that, it's the delay in a response. Two
weeks is not only unacceptable, it's insane. We don't live in a world
where people have the leisure to take their time crafting a response;
we did back in the day when websites were the way to get a message out,
but then we moved into a response time of hours with blogs, and now
we're at minutes with Twitter. As a rule of thumb, I'm finding that a
mention of an organization or company on Twitter is getting me a
response within a couple of hours now. And these are companies, both
large and small, who feel that it's important to respond to comments
from individuals, both good and bad. Less than this is sending out a
very poor message indeed. Now, I know that the answer here is going to
be referred to lack of staff, limited facilities and so on, and that's
simply a cop out. An effective use of resources, monitoring blogs etc
can be automated, take very little effort to set up or use and
information can then be disseminated through the organization quickly.
In my courses I teach librarians how to do this, and in most cases it's
just pointing them towards the right tools. If they can do it on a
personal level, surely we can expect the professional body to do the
same thing?

Let's move on. "The simple answer, of course, is no." Why is
that an 'of course'? It's neither hard or difficult to set up, and it's
not time intensive. I appreciate that it's not easy to choose which
emerging technologies or resources to use, but Twitter is pretty widely
reported these days, hundreds of librarians and libraries are using it,
CILIP groups are active on it, so why 'of course'?

The next section really did make my jaw drop. "In terms of
"official" activity, cyber life is just like real like (sic) - if it
happens in a CILIP-sanctioned space, it's official; if it happens down
the pub or in someone else's space, it isn't." This is a classic
'ownership' issue - if we say it's real then it's real, and if we say
it isn't real, then it's not. If I'm in a CILIP sanctioned space
(whatever that is!) do my words and arguments take on more meaning than
if I'm not? Or perhaps I need to have an official CILIP representative
to add some gravitas to my comments? We don't live in a world when the
organization or PR department can control the message any longer -
things have moved on, and the webpage/site, while important, is no
longer the sole place in which activity can take place. You cannot own
the space any more and by not participating you're not stopping the
conversations taking place, you're not stopping people making up their
own minds, you're simply not involved or engaged. Moreover - just how
insulting do you want to become? What gives you the right to tell
people that their views don't matter?

Now, before you start using the "official" bit with me let me expand on
that slightly. I understand that an official comment isn't the same as
an unofficial one. However, your lack of engagement, except in
channels, places and under situations you control is not only
unprofessional it's insulting to all of these people who do care enough
about the organization to spend time talking about it. We can't always
do that with 'official' representatives around, but that doesn't mean
that what is said isn't accurate or useful or valid, and it certainly
doesn't mean CILIP shouldn't be involved. I'm getting an image here of
CILIP standing with its fingers in its ears going 'la la la, we can't
hear you.'

The question is raised 'how does an organization maintain a culture of
inclusion, while retaining a methodical approach to work planning,
managing and decision making?' CILIP doesn't currently have a culture
of inclusion though; quite the opposite. That's already been made clear
with the concept of CILIP sanctioned space. It's further made clear on
your very own weblog 'CILIP members may post comments'. Not anyone
else. That's not a culture of inclusion (and plenty of other
professional organizations welcome comments from non-members), that's a
culture of exclusion. By not engaging with people in a variety of
different places, by ignoring them that's not a culture of inclusion,
it's an isolationist policy. I deal with librarians almost every day
who see it as their role to get information to people however they need
it - face to face, by email, via websites, via social networking; they
see the ability to share and include as a good thing. Yet the
professional body itself is taking the exact opposite view!

However, to attempt an answer to the question posed, I would say that
it's necessary to explore these networks, to try things out, to play
with them and to see if they can be incorporated into daily work flows.
Not to dismiss them out of hand because they're not in CILIP sanctioned
space. If you don't explore these resources you're not going to be able
to answer that question! You should be doing the exact opposite of what
you're currently doing.

There certainly is a widening gap between the culture of the institute
and the culture of the network. You're able to acknowledge that, yet
you can't seem to be able to get passed that. Yet other companies,
other organizations and, dare I say it, libraries are already embracing
new approaches, different ways of working and different ways of
engaging. This isn't new - in order to answer the question just *look
around you*. Perhaps even actually engage in 'non CILIP sanctioned'
places. Encourage staff to do so. Stop trying to control everything,
and explore new methods.

The question is asked 'how do we deal with this gap, bringing together
the best features of an institute and network'. You do it by doing it.
You start by trying things out, by embracing a culture of change, by
accepting the possibility that things can work differently, by allowing
staff to get involved, by looking at Twitter, and Facebook and
everything else that's out there. You accept that you're not going to
get everything right, and accept that even if you get things wrong
you're learning. You try and set an example. If I want to see what is
happening in British Librarianship at the moment - the last place that
I would look for guidance and examples of good practice would be at the
professional body; I'll go into the field and talk to librarians who
are doing it. Who are using Twitter, Facebook and the rest of it, who
are prepared to try things out to see what works. CILIP is not doing
this - CILIP is still sitting in splendid isolation, talking about
'sanctioned spaces'. CILIP is denying a voice, deliberately, to people
who might want to engage, but in places and times of their choosing.
CILIP is ignoring the possibilities afforded by Twitter by not even
looking at how they could be used. I almost weep for the many good,
effective and professional people who work there - people that I know
want to do more than they're able to at the moment.

I am ashamed of CILIP.

Next (and sorry, but we're not finished yet), we have the astonishing
phrase 'just to test whether anyone actually reads this stuff'. Yes, we
do. Why would you think that we wouldn't - because it's you who is
saying it, or because it's in a weblog? Or is it because, if it was up
to you, you wouldn't be reading it if it was someone else?' Are you
reading this, Bob? I'll bet money that you're not. Or, if you do, it's
because it's been brought to your attention. Because if you assume
other people aren't going to be reading your material, it's probably
because you're not reading theirs. We continue - 'how can we best
combine the authority of our institute with the democracy of our
network?' Well, because CILIP is not engaged with it's staff, clients,
members and other interested parties, why do you assume that you have
much authority? Individuals working in your organization have authority
- huge amounts of it, and I listen to them, when I get the chance. Your
groups have tremendous authority as well - but CILIP? You're abrogating
that authority every single day that you're ignoring the discussions,
by clinging to the concept of 'sanctioned space', by desperately trying
to cling to control when it's slipping through your fingers, away from
your network and out into social spaces. Also 'our network'. That again
speaks volumes, because the whole thrust of the internet is towards
shared space, community networking, and away from closed networks.
Tragically I don't think you even understand how wrong that question
is.

Last of all, and we've finally got here, 'Answers on a blog post,
please, to this address. And no peengeing'. I have no idea what that
last word means, so forgive me for ignoring it. In the two responses,
both by the same person, we have the statement 'I would leave a comment
if I could work out how'. It's one final, sad reminder that CILIP
doesn't want discussion, it doesn't want to engage, it simply wishes to
control it's 'sanctioned space'. That's a dreadful situation, and
bitterly upsetting. However, unlike CILIP - if you want to respond
you're more than welcome to - my blog comments are open to anyone who
wants to make a comment, and I'll post anything you care to say to me
Bob. I doubt that you will, because I doubt that you're interested
enough to engage in conversation, though I'd be happy for you to prove
me wrong.

There's a temptation to say 'By the Power of Oxysearch!' when looking at OXYsearch. Even the logo amuses me - I'm sure that it's intended to look like one of the soap powder brands. What do you think? Anyway, this is a multi search engine, drawing together (with concentrated power!) results from Google, Yahoo, Live, Ask, Pixsy and a few others for good measure. The results screen is very similar to the triptych used by Ask before they took the dopey pills, with a narrow results option on the left, results in the middle and appropriate other content on the right, such as headlines, video, images, blog results and so on.
If you liked the way Ask used to work, you'll probably like this one. Not so happy with the fact that the adverts take most of the real estate above the fold, and it's necessary to right scroll to see the extra content column, especially when there's a great gaping nothing to the right of the results. It could also provide more information about the results - it's all well and good telling us that results have come from specific engines, but I'd like to know which position as well as which engine. The 'share' option is also worth a quick note; it's really giving you the chance to provide friends information across a very wide range of social media resources including Twitter.

If you're into blended results, as well as getting your whites whiter than white, then you could do worse than spend a few minutes browsing OXYsearch.

I took a look at Mr Taggy, which is a prototype engine that uses social data in the form of tags to return results. Unfortunately we're not told which resources are being used, which would be helpful. Results are clear, although there's no summary, just a list of tags and the thumbnail. The emphasis of the engine is on the tags of course, so that's not surprising.

There is a list of tags that have been chosen for search on the left, with other related tags below. What I liked about the search engine was that it was really easy to change results with a single mouse click to include or exclude tags, and the results re-arranged themselves very smoothly. They're very upfront about the prototype element, so can be forgiven for no help screens, no RSS save options and so on. For a barebones resource this works well, and it is worth including in a collection of social media engines.

February 24, 2009

I've been informed that surchur has been updated. This is a nice search engine which has a rather different looking interface. Type in your search term and surchur will find appropriate results in areas as diverse as Yahoo Buzz, Google Trends, CNN Topics, Twitter search, social applications such as digg, and delicious, images from Flickr, photobucket and pixsy, blog search engines, news sources, video sources, and product sites such as ebay and Amazon.

The folks at surchur have improved the interface, so it has a much cleaner design, it loads quickly, there's a 'popular search' option, a 'surchmeter' to see how hot your keywords are with various sources and a nice little dashboard to hold everything. And RSS feeds for your searches, hot topics and so on. No Help option though, and no, the short FAQ doesn't count. Well - I have to moan about something don't I!

All told, it's a nice engine; it does what it should do quickly and effectively. Give it a spin.

I'm surprised it took this long. There's an eBay sale going on at the moment for Twitter accounts. This one is up for grabs at $30 for 400 Twitter Followers. The sales pitch goes "I'm selling Twitter accounts, each with a total of 400+ followers.It took me three months to gather this many followers for each account, considering the follow rate is less than 10% and Twitter bans you for following too quickly." A brief check shows other accounts for sale at up to $60 - that one has over 3,000 followers. All the auctions make it clear that the account name doesn't matter and can be changed as required, and that the name won't be released until after the auction, making it next to impossible for Twitter to block the account.

Mind you, anyone stupid enough to part with $60 (or $250 for the buy it now option!) really does deserve everything they don't get!

For the love of all that's wonderful will someone, somewhere, *please* create a people search engine that's actually any good! The latest dross to roll off the line is MyLife.com which says 'Find everyone, all in one place' which sounds great. However, if you want to use the search engine you have to register first. Well, to save you the hassle of doing this, I went through and did it myself. Up pops 'You are now a member with limited access... Become a Premium Member for full access!' at something like $5 a month. Not only that, but there's a 'limited time offer' with a little stopwatch clicking down! It's hard to get much tackier than that, but they try. As a sweetener, they're telling me that 3 people have searched for my name, conveniently in my age bracket and surprise surprise, they're all women!

Clicking through to the next screen brings up the 'give us your email addresses and passwords so we can check for your friends' line. Seriously - they're expecting me to give out details like this? Desperate to see the results of my search (looking for my own email address) I finally get through to the next screen, where I'm supposed to put in my details so that they can be added to their database. Clicking on again I'm hopeful that this time I'll get to the details of my search.

Finally! Only... I'm back at a search screen. And I'm asked to give the details again, and this time with the addition that the individual I'm looking for has to be in the US. Brilliant. So it's 'Find everyone you know' as long as they're in the US. Still, I carry on, get my list of results and guess what - in order to see anything useful I've got to pay to get premium access.

Utter tat. Don't even get close enough to poke this rubbish with a bargepole.